This was 1 of the 3 posters we presented at the SSPI Holiday Gala and it focuses on the engineering aspect of our project. In this poster we mainly talk about the plate scanner we are building.

1. Tardigrade Petri Dish Plate Scanner and Earth Hab
Materials Used
- Moldable Rubber (Sugru)
- 2 Homemade pumps
- 2 Arduinos
- 2 Turbines
- 2 Motors
- Petri dish
- 3D printed petri dish lid
- 2 Sealable bags
- Tubes
- 4 Alligator clips
- 2 Transistors
- Wires
Moon Bears to Space
2017
Purpose
The plate scanner’s main purpose is to provide an efficient and accurate way to
monitor tardigrades living inside the petri dishes. The motives behind building it lay in
the pricing and the unavailability of marketed plate scanners. Plate readers are usually
sold starting anywhere from $2,000 to $129,000 dollars. The M.B.T.S. team does not
have access to that amount of funding. Therefore, we decided to design and build our
own, inexpensive plate scanner.
Figure 1. 3D model of plate scanner.
Figure 3. Plate scanner parts and base.
Tardigrade Earth Habitat
The Earth habitat was built as a regulated habitat for the tardigrades to keep them
alive, and was also built as a starting, “warm-up” step before creating the ISS space
habitat. The design is a petri dish containing the tardigrades with regulated water and
algae intake. There are two bags: one containing algae, the other containing water.
Both are connected to turbine pumps that are controlled by arduinos allowing them to
turn on for a short amount of time every week.
How it works
The plate scanner is set on a dual axis linear stage, where on each axis there are two
linear rods. Each linear rod runs through two bearings and is connected at the end by 3D
printed end caps. An acrylic sheet sits on the end caps with a belt connected to the ends
of the acrylic sheet. A stepper motor controls the movement of the belt overall moving
the acrylic. The petri dish sits on the top acrylic sheet with a digital microscope
mounted above the scanner which enables any organism placed on the petri dish to be
monitored. The stepper motors are controlled by coded Arduinos and motor shields,
which tell the motor to respond when certain buttons are pressed.
Figure 2. Technical plate scanner parts.
- Arduinos
- Aluminum rods
- Wires
- Arduino motor shield
- Electrical tape
- Belts
- Screws
Materials Used
- Acrylic sheets
- Aluminum angle pieces
- Stepper motors
- Bread boards
- 3D printed pieces
- 3M tape
- Microscope eyepiece
- Buttons
- Linear bearings
- Worm gear
Figure 3. Tardigrade Earth hab.